Better Late than Never

Posted on Wed 10th Jul, 2019 @ 7:54am by Lieutenant JG Artyom Mikhailov

1,321 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: A Diplomatic Affair
Location: Deck 44
Timeline: MD2 19:42 Hours

"Excuse me, please!" Artyom urged as he slipped between two groups of people whose proximity to one another had created a perilous bottleneck that he needed to get through if he was going to make it to the tram in time. Resolving the matter on Deck 44 had taken longer than he would have liked, and although the problem had been solved, Artyom was now more than an hour and a half late in picking Matthew up from daycare.

It wasn't as though the Starbase daycare facilities lacked suitable facilities to keep Matthew into the evening or even overnight, but that wasn't the point. Matthew had spent the first two and half years of his life always at his father's side back when they were stranded planetside, and although he seemed to enjoy making new friends, his father was sorely missing their time together. With it already closing in on 20:00 hours which was well past Matthew's bedtime, Artyom knew that their time together would be limited.

The engineer nearly burst through another congregation of people when he heard the sound that he'd been dreading. It was the final call from the tram, which a few seconds later was followed by the sound of anti-gravitic generators whining up as the tram departed the station.

Artyom emerged into the waiting area just in time to watch it leave.

"Proklyat'ye!" Artom cursed loudly and with a stomp. He was nearly out of breath, frustrated, angry, and disappointed to have missed the tram. It didn't help that his Mydayis, a medication necessary to manage his ADHD symptoms had burned out at least twenty-minutes ago. He was also hungry. The combination meant that his brain felt fuzzy and noisy, and with the ambient commotion it was nearly impossible to think straight. He was feeling further agitated as he tried to think of how else he could get to Deck 575, but failed.

"Hey buddy, it's alright." A passerby said upon seeing Artyom's reaction. "Another one is coming in ten minutes."

Artyom feigned a smile but couldn't keep the rich-sarcasm from coming out when he "thanked" the random person for their information. The Betazoid seemed confused before scoffing and going on his way. And by the time Artyom realized how uncalled for what he'd said was, it was too late to apologize, which gave him one more thing to be frustrated about.

"Egh... what the hell was I thinking?" he chided himself rhetorically while he took a seat at a nearby bench.

"Some days you eat the bear, and some days the bear eats you," said Riko McCord, who had been watching the man's struggles. "How far do you have to go? Maybe there's another way."

Artyom waved towards the unseen destination, unsure whether or not it was even the right direction. He could feel a thousand responses coming to mind, few of them coming even close to being semi-polite. Only after he noticed the three pips on the woman's collar did he swallow the first thing that was making its way towards his throat. Even without his ADHD medication, he tried to calm his own mind. "Eh, this is unlikely... Ma'am. I apologize for my outburst. I am on my way to pick up my son. For him, it is very late."

Riko nodded and smiled. "Perhaps he's caught up in something as much as his Papa was, and will not think it a hard thing to be given a few more precious minutes. I take it his school isn't close enough to take the turbolifts? They are sort of like the local bus route, covering perhaps 50 decks. It's very different living in a large city than on a small ship, isn't it?" Her voice was almost wistful. On Samurai, she had known everyone, and been good friends with many, some she would never see again.

Artyom hoped that Matthew wouldn't be caught up in anything at his age. "It is indeed. Before this, the largest ship I was on was an Akira." He paused for a moment before continuing with, "I may still get lost from time to time."

He measured the commander's input and tried to come up with a mental picture of the starbase. Technically, it was possible. He'd need to travel to another part of the station to get to a turbolift, and then there was the matter of having to wait while it followed its long path down the station... stopping at every point. He tried to keep the disappointment from his voice as he spoke.

"But I do not believe that the turbolift would be available from this distance. Or viable." He looked back to the empty station where hopefully a new tram would appear in eight or nine minutes. Artyom took a seat at a bench. A random memory from their time together on the planet popped into his head and disappeared just as quickly. It was of the two of them plucking loose-approximations of apples from a nearby tree. It made Artyom miss his son even more.

Foregoing mention of Jeffries tubes and other possibilities that existed on a base and not on a ship, Riko nodded, "You could be right. Akira is a good starship," she said. "I've served on two myself. Are you brand new at 109, then?" She was making idle conversation to help him pass the time, and she tried to imagine the little boy he was so worried about. Would he look like a miniature of his father? Or would there be characteristics of his mother discernible, too?

Artyom nodded with a strange little expression that said that the story to that end was more complicated. No matter how many times he'd explained that he'd spent the past several years shipwrecked on an alien world, it never felt easy to discuss. Artyom rarely went into the circumstances behind Matthew's mother or her demise unless prompted. "I am." He said, deciding to control his impulse to delve much further than that.

"Welcome aboard, to you and your family, then. I hope you enjoy it here. I served with the base commander on a ship for a number of years, and washed up here as a refugee after a vicious attack on that ship left us ... in a mess," she summarized quickly. I've been here a year now, and there are certainly wonderful things to experience." A tram signal chimed, and Riko stood up. "I think I hear your second chance coming."

Artyom's face lit up a bit to the sound of the tram's appearance. Then he looked at his chronometer. By now, the daycare staff would have already fed Matthew and the boy was probably already asleep in his cot, which meant that Artyom would need to carry him back to their quarters. It also meant that he would have had less than an hour with his son today. The fact that the tram was approaching gave Artyom what he felt was a good opportunity to ask a bold question. "If you don't mind a question, Ma'am." Artyom paused. "If you had to choose between family... and your Starfleet career. Which direction would you go?"

"There's no choice. Family is always first," McCord said. She hesitated a moment, then decided to say more. He had asked, after all.

"If you think SB109 is a good place to bring up a child, and you don't have other options you like, then make yourself aware that there are lots of options for employment right here on the base. Assess your capabilities, and then look up and down the Promenade, in Tivoli Gardens and the companies on those decks. You can find a way to support your family here, and a place to live."

The tram came to a stop in front of them. Riko smiled at him and nodded toward the transportation. "Go get your boy and put him first, Lieutenant. You'll never regret it."

 

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